The present invention relates to a remote control system for remotely controlling various electronic devices, and more particularly to a remote control system for remotely controlling devices such as AV (audio visual) devices by way of voice commands.
In recent years, various AV devices such as stereo sets, television receivers, cassette tape decks, video tape decks, compact disk players, laser vision disk players, or the like are equipped with remote control systems.
A remote control system has a transmitter which is usually positioned remotely from a controlled AV device. The transmitter, when operated, transmits a remote control signal, such as an infrared remote control signal, which is received by a receiver in the controlled AV device. The received remote control signal is decoded to control the AV device as intended by the remote control signal.
There has recently been developed a voice-operated remote control commands entered through keys. The voice-operated remote control system has a microphone mounted on a transmitter for converting a voice command into an electric voice signal, and a speech recognition LSI (Large Scale Integration) circuit for generating a remote control signal which corresponds to a voice pattern represented by the voice signal. The remote control signal thus generated is transmitted to a receiver in a controlled AV device.
In the conventional voice-operated remote control system, a remote control signal corresponding to the recognition result of a speech recognition process is transmitted as it is.
The degrees of importance of operations of a controlled device which correspond to respective remote control signals, i.e., the magnitudes of effects caused by erroneous recognition, may not necessarily be the same. For example, any trouble caused by erroneous recognition of a voice command is greater with respect to a recording operation than a reproducing operation. If control commands are handled with suitable different degrees of importance depending on the type of the control commands rather than with the same degree of importance, then the speech recognition can be processed highly efficiently, and more reliability can be achieved for more important control commands.